Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2008, Side 110

108
THE BORROWING SCALE AND DANISH IN FAROESE
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Figure 3.1 have grouped the results so that the most frequent and unambiguous examples are located
to the far right. The sentences - with an English word-for-word translation: Marjun gevur ringin til mín
'Mary gives ring-the-acc. to me-acc.', Marjun gevur ringin til mannin ‘M. gives ring-the-acc. to man-
the-acc.’, Marjun gevur ringin til mannin, og ikki til konuna 'M. gives ring-the-acc. to man-the-acc., and
not to woman-the-acc., Marjun selur ringin til mannin, og ikki til konuna 'M. sells ring-the-acc. to man-
the-acc., and not to woman-the-acc., Marjun selur ringin til mín 'M. sells ring-the-acc. to me-acc-sg.,
Marjun selur bilin til jógvan 'M. sells car-the-acc. to John-acc.', Marjun gevur manninum ringin ‘M. gives
man-the-dat. ring-the-acc.', Marjun selur Jógvani bilin 'M. sells John-dat„ car-the-acc., Marjun selur mær
ringin 'M. sells me-dat. ring-the-acc.' and Marjun gevur mcer ringin 'M. gives me-dat. ring-the-acc.'.
(10d) Hon gav [DP troyggjuna [PP til [DP
Mariu]]. (40%)
she-nom.sg. gave sweater-the-acc. to
Mary-acc.
'She gave the sweater to Mary'.
(Jónsson 2008, forthcoming)
The change is, according to Jónsson (2008),
the result of language acquisition. I, however,
cannot see how it is possible to completely
rule out language contact as a possibility, as
children learn from their surroundings.
As with the impersonal object construc-
tion, I also conducted a judgment test with
geva 'to give' and selja 'to sell' but with a full
NP as well as a pronoun and a focus sentence
(Figure 3).
In August 2008 I did field work on the
Faroe Islands together with a colleague from
the Faroese University. The result of this
work is that animacy plays a role in the
change of argument structure with geva 'to
give' (Figure 4).